


slowly, slowly

by ewagan



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 90's, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-24 07:20:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7499208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ewagan/pseuds/ewagan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i></i></p><blockquote><p><i>This isn’t forever, not really, but these are days for Bokuto to keep in his pocket, when things are difficult and he can’t pull himself up.</i></p></blockquote><br/> Falling happens slowly, slowly.<p></p>
            </blockquote>





	slowly, slowly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tothemoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tothemoon/gifts).



> Hi Justine!
> 
> I really hope you like your gift. I know it's not precisely what you asked for but nonetheless, I hope you enjoy it. :)

He meets Kuroo by accident, mostly.

There's a camera in his hands and he's taking the photo before he's aware of it, a picture of some stranger at a beach too early in the morning. The sound of the shutter is loud and the camera whirs in Bokuto's hands, and he grins sheepishly at the other guy.

"I'm sorry, I should have asked." he apologizes. The stranger just smiles and shrugs.

"It's cool." There's something easy and languid about him, and Bokuto wants to take more pictures, to see how he would look on film.

"I'm Bokuto. Bokuto Koutarou.” he says, words tumbling out like a reflex.

"Kuroo." The man has a cheshire grin and Bokuto’s fingers itch to take another photo.

"Let me buy you coffee." he says. "As an apology." And maybe also as an excuse to ask if he can take more pictures of Kuroo.

“It’s fine. You don’t have to.”

“Please?” Bokuto asks, with the look Yukie had labelled as his puppy dog one pasted over his face. It never works with Yukie, but it never hurts to try.

“You’re not going to let me say no, are you?” Kuroo asks, eyebrows arched in amusement. Bokuto shakes his head and grins, lifting his camera up to take another photo.

“Now I need to double apologize.” Bokuto beams, and Kuroo laughs.

“Okay, sure. Coffee.” Kuroo agrees.

They wind up in the local diner, a sticky tabletop separating them. Kuroo drinks his coffee with a splash of cream and no sugar, while Bokuto doctors his with enough sugar and cream to make it not really coffee.

Kuroo tells him that he’s on a break between semesters, that yes, the bedhead was natural, no nothing could tame it (what a monster it was). They order more coffee and breakfast, Bokuto asks more questions about Kuroo. He learns that Kuroo has a childhood friend named Kenma, that he played the guitar (once, but it was a long time ago), that he’s currently living in the apartments nearby the local playground.

There is something familiar about the way Kuroo gestures, the way he speaks. His eyes are piercing when he looks at Bokuto, and when he smiles it’s the cheshire grin that Bokuto desperately wants to photograph.

“What about you?” Kuroo asks, when their conversation hits a lull.

So Bokuto tells him about his job helping out at the local grocery store, stacking crates and sorting vegetables. It’s boring, but it was enough to pay the bills and leave him enough for the film. He tells Kuroo about the photography, how it feels to stand in a dark room and watch the image form. He doesn’t tell Kuroo that it’s a distraction, a way to stop himself from falling in too deep. He tells Kuroo about the town, the tourists who come in summer and the quietness of winter.

Kuroo’s fingers are long and elegant around his coffee as Bokuto talks, punctuating the stories with witty remarks and dry humour. The diner fills out and empties around them as the hours pass, until Bokuto looks at his watch and realizes he’s going to be late for work if he doesn’t run.

He gets Kuroo to agree to meet again the next day at the diner before he’s running out the door, a silly grin on his face. He’s breathless when he arrives at work just barely on time, but it’s not entirely because he ran five blocks.

 

The photos Bokuto develops document the trajectory of their relationship, the way Kuroo’s body language becomes more open as time passes, his smile easier, the way sometimes there is a picture of Bokuto as well. Bokuto learns to read Kuroo’s many smiles, to spy mischief in the glint of his eyes and amusement in the tilt of his chin. Kuroo’s not the easiest person to know, and he keeps more secrets than he tells, but Bokuto doesn’t mind. There are things that are not his to know; he learned that with Akaashi.

Despite that, he and Kuroo are fast friends, a similar sense of humour and thinking that lead to hours debating the finer points of death by pudding or piranhas while they walk, dinners in Bokuto’s apartment with the extra produce the grocer gives him sometimes. Kuroo cooks better than Bokuto does, so Bokuto does the dishes while Kuroo switches channels on the radio. Sometimes they’d turn on the television to see what movie rerun was on, or laugh at bad infomercials. In between these times, Kuroo sometimes talked about his childhood in vague terms, parents who were busy with work and high expectations of him, of long ago summer days and long Pennsylvania winters. Inevitably, Kuroo turns it on him and asks _what about you?_ So Bokuto tells him about the city he moved away from, the high school friends he’d left behind. _It’s difficult to be someone in the city, it’s hard to be significant._ He doesn’t tell Kuroo everything, but Kuroo listens to the silences as much he does the words.

Bokuto would also swear that with Kuroo around, things took on a slightly different tone, as if the sky had become brighter and sharper somehow, the evenings softer. Ordinary things became something new and strange, taking on a different nuance. It is the same and it is not, different in minute ways that Bokuto’s only beginning to see.

He takes more pictures, trying to catch each moment before it slips through his fingers. There are late night runs to the diner, drinking coffee at five in the morning, Kuroo’s silhouette outlined by streetlights as they walk home. He doesn’t want to forget the sharp bite of the wind at the water’s edge, pulling at his jacket and Kuroo’s hair. He wants to remember Kuroo’s laughter, as dissonant and harsh it is. There’s the feeling of sand between his toes and icy water, Kuroo cackling at Bokuto’s wailing about the freezing water from where he was safe at the pier, the cry of seagulls high above his head.

It leaves him with rolls of film to develop, spending hours in the dark room waiting for images to form.

He secures the photos with clothespins, leaving them to dry on the line. There are pictures of many things - the worn out boardwalk of this sleepy seaside town, the beach, seagulls fighting over fries, a pile of seashells, cliffs in the distance. And there was Kuroo. Kuroo, laughing. Kuroo peering at him over the top of his ice cream. Kuroo, a distant figure ahead of him, trailing footprints in the sand. Kuroo, smiling at him from across the room.

When they’re dry, he sorts through them and picks the ones he likes best. He shows them to Kuroo later, who smiles indulgently at him. While he flips through the photos, Bokuto lifts his camera up for another picture. Something about the moment feels impossibly fragile and delicate, something to be cherished. It’s gone when Kuroo lifts up a picture of two seagulls fighting over one fry, chuckling.

When he develops the photo, he keeps it tucked in the pages of his journal.

 

Kuroo fits into Bokuto’s life almost seamlessly, in small pieces until it is strange to not see him every day. It is difficult to imagine Kuroo elsewhere and not here, in this small town where nothing particularly exciting happened.

They’re at the beach again, having kicked off their shoes to stand at the edge of the water. Bokuto can feel the sand slipping away under his feet as the waves break, running back to the ocean. He breathes in the sharp sea salt smell and the cold wind flapping around his ears, tugging at his jacket one way and then another. He is aware it is still too cold to be dipping even his feet in the ocean, but he feels reckless and young and alive.

He looks over at Kuroo, who looks like he belongs out here with his trousers rolled up his calves, hands shoved into his pockets while he’s ankle deep in freezing water. He looks like something as enduring as the cliffs that run further along the coast, as unmovable and reliable as the ground beneath Bokuto’s feet. He’s wearing that stupid blue jacket of his, the one with the zipper that always gets stuck and the hood that couldn’t quite cover his head, the one with a hole in the left pocket that Kuroo refuses to mend (Bokuto knows, from that one time he tried to stick ice in it because who the hell ate ice-cream in March, when the wind was still cold enough to bite into your bones and sink in?) and his hair is even even worse a state than usual, but somehow he’s the most beautiful thing that Bokuto’s seen.

And maybe some things weren’t meant to be kept in a photograph, a suspended moment of time. Some things were meant to be experienced, remembered and cherished. Bokuto thinks this is one of them, so he presses it into his heart, folds it away for later to remember. A day on the beach with Kuroo when it’s too still cold, his toes freezing while the waves lapped at his ankles. A day almost like all the other days, but not the same.

 

He coaxes Kuroo into playing the guitar for him. _Come on, please? I promise I won’t laugh_ and Kuroo’s refusals _I haven’t played since high school, I can’t remember how to play any songs_ but he succeeds, because he is Bokuto Koutarou and he knows how to wheedle his way into getting things he wants.

So they sit in Bokuto’s apartment, Kuroo on the floor while Bokuto is sprawled on the couch as Kuroo’s long fingers pluck at the strings, feeling out chords for songs he’d learned to play from his father. Some John Denver, a little Johnny Cash, a sprinkling of Elvis. Bokuto takes a picture of him like this, head bent over the guitar as he sings softly, fingers unsure but he’s trying anyways.

He gets Kuroo to teach him a little, but it hurts his fingers. Bokuto’s never tried playing the guitar before and while it isn’t difficult, his fingertips weren’t made for this and he gives Kuroo back the guitar, letting him pick out faintly familiar melodies of songs his mother used to sing along to on the radio, things like Frank Sinatra and the Beatles.

He’s happy, he realizes. He’s happy that Kuroo is here, sitting next to him and indulging his silly whims. It’s silly to be this happy about something so insignificant, but he thinks he sort of understands those movies where the girl and the boy are stupid in love, where they chase each other across the beach and kiss until they fall in the water, where he screams he loves her from halfway across a parking lot. It’s not quite the same, no, but Bokuto thinks he can live with this, Kuroo’s head heavy against his thigh and playing old love songs, humming softly about rivers and falling in love.

 

"My mother told me that there's a red string that ties you to another person." They're lying on the beach, Kuroo tracing constellations in the sky while Bokuto watches him. It's still too cold for them to be out at night with only thin jackets, but Bokuto can't really feel the bite of the wind when Kuroo is next to him. He’s more aware of the way his heart is beating faster than it should, the warmth of Kuroo’s arms pressed against his.  
  
"Yeah?" Kuroo's profile is just visible in the moonlight. Bokuto wishes he could take a picture, but there isn't enough light. He wishes he could capture it somehow, the soft slant of moonlight over Kuroo's cheek.

"Yeah. It connects two people meant for each other, regardless of time and circumstance. It can stretch and tangle, but it won't ever break." Kuroo hums thoughtfully, and Bokuto is aware how close they are. He can see the sweep of Kuroo's eyelashes, the faint indent of his temple.

"That's a really romantic notion." Bokuto muses.

“It’s an old story, something she heard from her mother. She told it to me when I was very young, I think.” Kuroo says softly.

“I like it.” Bokuto says after a few moments. “The idea that there is someone for you, that you won’t always be alone.” Kuroo turns his head and Bokuto smiles, just a little. He can’t quite make out Kuroo’s expression, but there’s a softness to it that makes Bokuto want to reach out and trace the shape of his cheekbone and the curve of his mouth.

“Yeah?” Kuroo asks, something in his voice just this side of vulnerable.

“Yeah.” His hand finds Kuroo’s next to his, and hooks his pinky around Kuroo’s.

Later, he has his head in Kuroo’s lap when he talks into Kuroo into slow dancing with him, maybe more than a little drunk while Stevie Nicks croons softly in the background as they circle the living room. Bokuto’s smiling something stupid, but it’s three AM and he thinks he’s in love and that’s okay, that he can have this. So he leans a little closer and kisses Kuroo, slow and languid. It’s not what he imagined his first kiss would be like, but he thinks it’s better than what he’d imagined.

He doesn’t notice when the tape runs out, the two of them swaying to the sound of the cassette player whirring. He kisses Kuroo again, hands going to cradle Kuroo’s jaw and winding his fingers through Kuroo’s impossible hair, lets Kuroo kiss him back, hands warm and steady on his waist.

 

There are mornings he wakes up and Kuroo’s still asleep, limbs tangled with the sheets and sunlight spilling in through the windows. There is something easy about days like these, when he doesn’t have work and he presses soft, lazy kisses along the curve of Kuroo’s shoulder while Kuroo grunts and presses the pillow over his head, trying to block out the sunlight. It makes Bokuto smile, because it makes Kuroo’s bed head even more terrible than usual.

He makes breakfast, and maybe he can’t cook that well but at least bacon and eggs aren’t beyond him. Kuroo usually stumbles in once he smells coffee, looking like a porcupine. Bokuto just pushes the plate of bacon and eggs at him and Kuroo muches silently, until he’s caffeinated enough to speak.

There’s good morning kisses and late night make out sessions on the couch, where Kuroo kisses him soft and slow like the waves on the beach, the kind of kisses where people promise forever. This isn’t forever, not really, but these are days for Bokuto to keep in his pocket, when things are difficult and he can’t pull himself up. He leans on Kuroo instead, who just cards absent fingers through his hair until he feels like he can breathe again. It’s difficult to forget that he is not Atlas, that he was not meant to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders.

He doesn’t need forever, not really. He just needs today, his face pressed into the crook of Kuroo’s neck and the certainty that when tomorrow comes, he doesn’t have to face it alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay TBH this was not what I'd intended to submit for hols, but this was my favourite out of all the things I've written. I sort of struggled to put out something I was satisfied with, so there's like 5 other drafts of different things I tried to put out for hols.
> 
> The whole thing is vaguely 90's mixed with what I remember of the 90's was the tons of film negatives my mum had, how the camera felt in my hands on the rare occasions she'd let me have it, how we were always running out of battery. My mum listened to a huge amount of 70's and 80's music, we had a lot of cassettes. So I'd like to apologize if this differs a lot from what anyone remembers of the 90's.
> 
> I was looping [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NucJk8TxyRg) a lot while I was writing this, so I think it's coloured the writing some.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, and I really appreciate any kudos and comments.


End file.
